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The Day of the Jackal

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

BBC Radio 4 Extra - The Day of the Jackal

Patrick Humphries revisits 'The Day of the Jackal' and its impact.

Patrick Humphries explores the impact of Frederick Forsyth’s novel about an attempt to kill President De Gaulle. From 2011.

Seminal thriller The Day of the Jackal was first published in 1971. 

Patrick Humphries explores just what made the book so riveting for him and so ground-breaking for a whole generation of thriller writers influenced by its author, Frederick Forsyth. 

The novel was extraordinary for many reasons. For a start, it broke so many of the 'rules' of thriller writing. Harold Harris, Forsyth's editor at publisher Hutchinson and Co, noted all these, but still commissioned him for three novels.

The eponymous Jackal is a mercenary and in the novel he is hired by a real-life terrorist group, Organisation de l'Armee Secrete, whose members were intent on killing the French President Charles De Gaulle. The OAS wanted to retain Algeria as a French colony, and when de Gaulle reneged on his emotional avowal 'Vive l'Algerie francaise' ie 'Long Live French Algeria', and allow self-determination, he became the target of OAS assassins. Of course, as history proves, those assassins were never successful. Forsyth lived through those events as a Reuters correspondent in Paris, so it was an obvious choice of setting for his first attempt at thriller writing. 

Patrick talks to an editor at Hutchinson, Tony Whittome, Professor of Modern English Literature John Sutherland, OAS expert Clement Steuer, writers Lee Child, Andrew Rosenheim, Sam Bourne and the Jackal's author, Frederick Forsyth. 

Producer: Neil Rosser

A Ladbroke Production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in June 2011.

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